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| Thread ID: 105899 | 2009-12-18 02:54:00 | Help me understand the Southern Cross Cable | Chilling_Silence (9) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 840722 | 2009-12-21 17:26:00 | It is currently now my ISP, however not when I was with Orcon on Purple+. Almost always, anything national, both on my Orcon 4m/bit Purple+ connection, and my parents 15m/bit Silver+, AND both my Boss Orcon Platinum+ 14m/bit connection and his Telecom Pro 14m/bit, the limiting factor was always international traffic. That is unless you count Microsoft Windows Updates which are Akamai cached as you mentioned, then I was able to get those in at max line speed (It's handy having a router showing you realtime traffic statistics). I could fire either of my NZ up my VPS (Located in either the ICONZ DC in AK CBD or Orcon DC in Takapuna) and easily max out the line speed doing http, ftp, html5video, scp, you name it! Internationally however it's another story, as soon as I load up my international VPS. Transfer speeds between international and national VPS were great, however! From a multitude of tests, I was able to determine: The link between me and my VPS's in NZ was great The link between my VPS's in NZ and my US VPS was also great The link between me and any other host in NZ was great The link between me and any host outside NZ that wasn't cached using akamai, sucked. Irrespective of ISP. My guess on the cause at the time? The fact that the ISP doesn't have enough international bandwidth on the SCC. Why did they not have enough? Cost. Why does it cost so much that they don't have enough? Because it's the main / only real choice out there. There's tons of peering choices around NZ! In fact, as an ISP, if you want to peer with difference ISP's on a local level using different carriers to do-so, then you're absolutely free to do-so, and Telecom Wholesale seemed keen on the idea as far as I could see when I was on the recent Geek Exchange Tour. So what gives? |
Chilling_Silence (9) | ||
| 840723 | 2009-12-21 19:22:00 | I take your point Chill regarding your speed tests - my guess is relatively more capacity is set aside for businesses etc. where people aren't as cost concious. However, on the subject of peering I'm not sure all peering arrangements are made equal. ISPs have typically taken an approach of least cost when it comes to peering arrangements, for fear of 'back-wash'. Is it possible to test the data transfer speeds from different sites that are known to be hosted through differing ISPs? I'd be curious to see this test done using a number of ISPs too. Then we might be able to work out who has crapola peering arrangements. | andrew93 (249) | ||
| 840724 | 2009-12-21 22:25:00 | Well I tested to both ICONZ and Orcon from Telecom, Orcon (+ Network in Te Atatu), Vodafone (RED network in Henderson), TelstraClear (On the Shore - ADSL1) and every single time it maxed the line speed out when coming from my VPS's nationally, but nowhere near it internationally. Where's adslgeek when you need him ... |
Chilling_Silence (9) | ||
| 840725 | 2009-12-22 03:56:00 | LOL..The main reason for speed impacts is a couple of things Certainly a number of ISPs simple do not buy enough international bandwidth for the customers they have and that is certainly can be a big factor. I don't have a clue what Orcon have as far as capacity, but if you are seeing International as slow, then it is a good idea to feed that back to them. That is why you often read that say TelstraClear, Maxnet, Snap and Telecom seem to be reported as fast, and that is often as a result of that being an adequate purchase of bandwidth on a per customer basis. Also the other way that ISPs can really improve speeds is through caching, and that certainly has a compound impact because it can dramatically increase the speeds of the most commonly viewed sites, as well as reducing traffic to those popular sites thus making the link less utilised thus faster. Another commonly misunderstood issue with limiting throughput internationally can often be the TCP receive window (You can play around with this, and I am trying to build a server that can remotely test your MTU, MSS and TCP receive etc but my skills are not that good yet!) basically the speed that a packet getting back acknowledging the traffic sent can slow down the download speed as the far end is waiting on that reply. And the speed of light through glass becomes the limiting factor rather than buying more bandwidth. That is why caching can be so good. People often forget the simple physics involved with us being at the bottom of the globe, and the content we want being on the other side of the earth.. Also I saw someone in this thread saying that the Southern cross has only 1 in and 1 out, this is not true at all, it has multiple fibres and they are in a double ring config. www.southerncrosscables.com Southern Cross is not not heavily utilized, and it generally the ISPs that put a limit on how much they are prepared to spend. I could then imagine that you then think ah! Well then there isn't enough competition in NZ then! But that is rubbish too as there are heaps of different bandwidth suppliers across NZ. Another common misconception I hear bandied around is that NZ International is not competitive, but this same bandwidth is sold in Sydney at the same price as in NZ and they have a HEAP of competition there, and the price we in NZ get it is just the Sydney price plus the obvious cost of deliver of that last part of the tail to NZ. |
adslgeek (14687) | ||
| 840726 | 2009-12-22 05:51:00 | Also I saw someone in this thread saying that the Southern cross has only 1 in and 1 out, this is not true at all, it has multiple fibres and they are in a double ring config. Yes, but it is still the one cable sheath owned by the one company and this allows SCC to charge what they like on those sections where there is no competitor. |
decibel (11645) | ||
| 840727 | 2009-12-22 11:20:00 | So your suggestion to "speed up" NZ internet then is not the lack of international bandwidth, and another FTTN supplier almost seems redundant .. what do you think the Govt should do with it's billions? | Chilling_Silence (9) | ||
| 840728 | 2009-12-23 06:17:00 | So your suggestion to "speed up" NZ internet then is not the lack of international bandwidth, and another FTTN supplier almost seems redundant .. what do you think the Govt should do with it's billions? There needs to be a 2nd competing cable to "help" bring down data charges and ISP's can increase there International capacity at a fair cost. There is little point us having 100Mb/s+ fibre connections into the home if we are still paying hefty data charges. Of course cached local content is the same cost to the user as International. basically the speed that a packet getting back acknowledging the traffic sent can slow down the download speed as the far end is waiting on that reply. And the speed of light through glass becomes the limiting factor rather than buying more bandwidth. That is why caching can be so good. People often forget the simple physics involved with us being at the bottom of the globe, and the content we want being on the other side of the earth.. I agree, and this is one of the reasons using a single source to test like "Speedtest.net" is a bit of a joke. Another way for users to get around this problem "now" is use a download accelerator to easily grab a file from multiple international sources much faster, 9/10 this works extremely well. |
Battleneter2 (9361) | ||
| 840729 | 2009-12-23 07:51:00 | Agreed. Imagine everybody has 100mbps connections. That's jack all when you consider there are international websites hosted here, so lets say 3/4 of that is residential use, thats 585gbps for residential (Not including anything business at all in this matter), that means there's 5,850 homes that can have a 100mbps pipe... Naturally it doesn't work out quite like my math shows, but yeah, it's SFA... And that's why I'm of the opinion the Govt is better off spending money to upgrade the international circuits than on making another fibre backbone across NZ. However, I may still be misinformed... Don't forget there is a lot of caching going on. |
mikebartnz (21) | ||
| 840730 | 2009-12-23 07:57:00 | Admit it CS. It's not the lack of bandwidth but just the price. | Sweep (90) | ||
| 840731 | 2009-12-23 19:03:00 | But the root cause of the lack of it seems to be the price, yes? | Chilling_Silence (9) | ||
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